You can now do more with Microsoft Bookings
Published Dec 17 2018 09:00 AM 124K Views
Microsoft

It’s been over 2 years since we launched Bookings and it has been an incredible journey with millions of bookings made across businesses of all types and sizes. During this time, we listened to your feedback (thanks for using UserVoice!) and learned a lot about your needs. These insights have been critical in helping us prioritize our work and our new feature investments.

 

Based on what you told us, we are improving Bookings in 4 areas – enterprise grade controls, customization, integrations, and the Bookings mobile app. Let’s take a look at what each one entails.

 

  1. Enterprise grade controls
    • Booking page for internal use only – We are adding the ability to publish booking pages that are only for an org’s internal use. With this option, which can be set on the Booking page node in Bookings Web app, users will need to authenticate with their Office 365 work or school account before they are able to access and use a booking page. This is ideal for “internal-use only” booking scenarios. Check out Customize your booking page for more details.

      Blog 1.png

      Check the box labeled “Require an Office 365 account from my organization to book” to require users authenticate before they can access a booking page.

       

    • Email notifications when employees are added as staff members – Now when a booking page owner adds an employee in your org as a staff member (as a guest, admin, or viewer) that employee will receive an email notification letting them know that their availability may be shared and that they may have been made bookable through a booking page. See Turn Microsoft Bookings On or Off for your Organization for more details.

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      When the booking page owner adds a staff member they’ll see a callout that added staff will be notified


      blog 3.png
      Added staff member will receive an email to accept/decline being added

    • Employee opt-in requirement – Office 365 admins now have the ability to require that employees in their organization opt-in before their availability information is shared through Bookings and before they can be bookable through a booking page. When an admin chooses to make this a requirement, by clicking the appropriate toggle in the Office 365 Admin Center, employees added as staff in booking calendars will find an Approve/Reject link in the email notification they receive (which is described above). From the Admin portal go to Settings/Services & add-ins/Bookings.  See Create your staff list for more details.

      blog 4.png
      Office 365 Admin Center controls that require an employee “opt in” to be schedulable through Bookings

    • Social sharing toggle – More control over how booking pages are shared. Admins can now control whether, or not, their users can see social sharing options inside Bookings. From the Admin portal go to Settings/Services & add-ins/Bookings. See Turn Microsoft Bookings On or Off for your Organization for more details.

      blog 5.png
      Office 365 Admin Center controls to prevent social sharing of a booking page

    • Reporting – From the Bookings Home page, you can now download up to 120 days of Bookings data into a TSV (“tab separated value” – we chose this because most bookings will include address information which typically includes commas) file that you can open with Excel. This feature lets you use the power of Microsoft Excel to analyze your bookings from 60 days prior to the time you download the TSV to 60 days in to the future. You can learn more about it here.

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      Export your booking data from the Home page

  2. Customization
    • Email confirmation customization – You told us you wanted to be able to share specific details or instructions in the booking confirmation emails your customers receive, and now you can. You can add custom, service specific text and URLs to the email confirmation sent to anyone that books a given service through your booking page.

      blog 7.png
      Add details to your confirmation emails

    • More control of your availability – Not all businesses are a 9-5, 5 days a week gig. Even if you are, you may only want to be bookable, for a given service, at a specific set of times. Say, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday morning from 9am to 11am for “Initial consultations” or from 9-5 but only for the first two weeks of January. So, we are adding greater control, at the service level, so you can more precisely control when your customers can book you through a booking page.

      blog 8.png
      Create as many rules as you need

    • Custom colors for booking page – Many customers have asked for the ability to apply their specific brand colors to the booking page. This feature will let you precisely specify the primary and secondary colors applied to your page. When you check the box labelled, “Set custom color scheme for your booking page” on the Booking page node in the Bookings Web app, you’ll be able to enter specific highlight and header color values to better align your Bookings experience with your needs. Check out Customize your booking page for more details.

      blog 9.png

      Enter three- or six-digit color codes to specify the highlight and header colors of your booking page

  3. Integrations
    • Online meeting support – Do you use Skype for Business for online meetings and want to use Skype for your bookings? We are adding Skype for Business support to Bookings and will follow that up with support for Teams meetings, early next year. This will let you easily turn your bookings into online meetings.

  4.  Bookings mobile app
    • ”View only” mode – Now, anyone added to a booking calendar as viewer who has a Bookings license can download and use the Bookings mobile app (App store and Google Play) to see theirs and their colleagues’ schedules, the bookings’ details, and business information. This access does not provide the ability to change or edit anything, or access to the customer list. Check out Bookings mobile app for more info.

    •  Support for iPad – We now support iPad and landscape view, so if you use your iPad as your point-of-sale system OR mainly use it in landscape view, Bookings rotates, as expected, and gives you a much better user experience.

 

We hope these features help you better manage your bookings. We are rolling them out in various stages over the next few months for Targeted Release customers and will GA shortly after that. If you are a Business Premium customer, a Microsoft 365 Business customer, or have an education (EDU) paid license (A3 or A5), Bookings is on-by-default for your organization and users can start creating booking pages. If you are an enterprise customer with an E3, E5, or Microsoft 365 Enterprise, Bookings must be enabled by the organization’s admin and assign licenses per user. You can learn how to do this in the Get access to Microsoft Bookings support article here.

 

Please, keep giving us feedback in our UserVoice channel because this helps prioritize our work with what you need in Bookings. 

 

Thanks!

 

Gabriel on behalf of the Bookings team

 

97 Comments
Silver Contributor

Great improvements.

Copper Contributor

I'd love to see this feature for parent-teacher conferences or PTSA sign-up's. This product feature should be a utilized benefit for teachers and students with an O365 EDU license but not sure how they are being made aware of this.  I believe the Bellevue School District in WA state uses O365 for students and teachers but I've only seen signupgenius used amongst parents and PTSA groups.

Iron Contributor
Gabriel, first of all thanks a lot for great news, indeed. I’m curious, is it feasible to add OAth2 enabled third-party identity provider to the Bookings service in order to make sure that only authorized external customers are able to book an appointment with internal specialists of our company?
Microsoft

Hi Alexey - Thanks for your feedback. Just so that I am clear on the scenario. You want to be able to "whitelist" specific domaina so that anyone in that domain can get a confirmation code in their whitelisted email to be able to book?

 

Thanks!

Iron Contributor
@Gabriel We have our own WSO2 OAuth server which provides identity and access management services for our customers, i.e. customers are authenticated and authorized by that service when use one of our web applications. We would like to provide them access to Bookings services when they are authenticated through our WSO2 OAuth identity server only.
Copper Contributor

@Gabo The 'more control over your availability' feature is an exciting one. I looked on my bookings account and this doesn't seem available yet. Do you have a release date on this feature? Also, the 6 person team I manage has a limited number of meeting slots (5/person) in a month that we are able to book 30 minute meetings. These slots are not on a weekly rhythm, but are random throughout the month. What is the best way to schedule out for a month, rather than giving availability for a week? Thanks!


Brass Contributor

I also don't see the ability to customize the confirmation email yet. It's 2/1, so I'm also curious if we have a release date for all of these.

 

I have TONS of other customization questions, so I guess I need to find a place to post there.

Brass Contributor

@Gabo is there the ability to book a 2 hour appointment, when the time increments have a default of 30 mins. Something like a multi select option so the customer doesnt have to book 4 times to get 2 hour slot? We want to use the App to book meeting rooms, so we have set the min time as 30mins, but some customers might want to book 1hr, 2hrs, 1/2 day and this option is not available from the online appointment calendar.

 

Steel Contributor

How is the rollout of these features progressing? We've got a Targeted Release tenant in Australia and are yet to see the option to control access to an internal-use bookings page.

Copper Contributor

@GaboAre you able to please update us on these features? We need the TSV as it is quite important that we can pull the data easily once the bookings are made.

 

Also, we have set the timezone to a different location but even in a private browser it is defaulting back to "Brisbane Australia" when we have it set to "Seoul, South Korea". We are having a event there and while the timing is correct the default zone for some unknown reason seems to want Brisbane all the time? Can we have something to define permanently (checkbox) we want the default displayed timezone to be that as to what we have set it as?

Brass Contributor

Hi @Gabo 

I have been using Bookings in my organization since October 2018.  At the time the option to configure "Booking page for internal use only" was not possible. 

How to I enable it now?  The option is not shown on my Bookings page to require O365 authentication, or to limit access to the Bookings page to only internal users.

How do I enable this for an existing Bookings config?

Copper Contributor

To echo Paul and the others above, do we have a timeline for when internal authentication will be available? This is very important to our future use of Bookings. 

Brass Contributor

How do we get microsoft to respond, tagging @Gabo doesnt seem to work?!

Brass Contributor

@Gabo Here @ Wayne State University,  we just Bought Booking for most of my staff and started to configure it.  we still don't see any of the new features you listed.  can you please let us know when they will be available? 

Copper Contributor

@Zhongzhong Li  Hi Zhong

 

I know you are more the Form Blog mod, but any chance you could have a chat with @Gabo to see where were are up to with this. We are not seeing any responses and we have quite a few people asking.

 

Thanks

 

Brad

 

 

Microsoft

@Brad Hosking , I will do that.

 

Regards,

Zhongzhong

Copper Contributor

@Gabo i came across this article wondering if it's possible to limit the booking period to a date range.

We'd like to use bookings to plan appointments upfront a trade fair.

Unfortunately i couldn't find the advanced availability options in my bookings interface.

Maybe this feature isn't rolled-out to german o365 instances?

Brass Contributor

@timbec No, it's not a german-only discrepancy, I am in the US and also do not see the "Set Service Availability." We, too, would love to be able to define date ranges for our services, so that folks don't book us for weeks/months out when we're no longer working on that project.

Copper Contributor

@Gabo would be great to get an update on timelines

Copper Contributor

Yes please, an update on the expected roll out date for these improvements would be great. A decision on the effectiveness of the app for our business depends on some of the updates.

Steel Contributor

It's been three weeks since my question and it hasn't been answered or even acknowledge. We're interested in the ability to control access to booking pages so that they can be used internally only, and have held off adopting Bookings (and competing products) for a long time waiting for this. Surely if the rollout is currently in progress someone from Microsoft can kindly update us on how it's going?

Microsoft

Hello everyone - First of all, I apologize for being MIA. We ran into some issues when deploying the new Bookings features, so I have an updated timeline below:

 

  • Booking page for internal use – Roll out to Targeted Release customers in March. GA will be late March/April.
  • Employee opt-in required toggle in Admin Center – Roll out to Targeted Release customers in March. GA will be late March/April.
  • Email confirmation customization – Roll out to Targeted Release customers in April.
  • More control of your availability – Roll out to Targeted Release customers in March.
  • TSV reporting - Available WW
  • Social sharing toggle - Available WW
  • Email notifications when employees are added as staff members - Roll out starting in April.
  • ”View only” mode for iOS and Android - Available WW.
  • Custom colors - Rolling out now.
  • Online meeting support - This has been pushed back and expected for the summer.

I really apologize for the late communication on this as I was trying to find out the state of each feature. I hope you'll keep using Bookings and giving us feedback in UserVoice

Brass Contributor

@Gabriel Valdez Malpartida is there the ability to book a 2 hour appointment, when the time increments have a default of 30 mins. Something like a multi select option so the customer doesnt have to book 4 times to get 2 hour slot? We want to use the App to book meeting rooms, so we have set the min time as 30mins, but some customers might want to book 1hr, 2hrs, 1/2 day and this option is not available from the online appointment calendar.

Brass Contributor

@Keira McCann 

 

you can create separate services in bookings and set the duration for each. 

 

My my company has services for:

 

30, 60, and 90 minutes.   You need to create individual services to allow the customer to select the amount of time needed. 

Brass Contributor

thanks @Christopher J. Crocker but we are using this for meeting room bookings in a shared office space, so need the ability for users to arrive at the room and quickly book whatever timeslot they wish (45mins, 5hrs, 8hrs etc)

Brass Contributor

@Keira McCann 

 

you should still be able to accomplish that using a different multiple services with different durations. Name each with the duration for that service 

 

- Book Room 30min

- Book Room 60min

- Book Room 90min

- Book Room 2 hours

and so on...

 

Then in each services definition/settings you set each to the duration needed. 

 

The Users would simply click the desired service for the length they need. 

 

We use use the tool for the same reason and this works very well for us.  It’s fast and convenient. 

Brass Contributor

YEY, the feature "Require an Office 365 account from my organization to book" just popped up in our portal.  Thank you for getting it to us!

 

I have to say though, I am disappointed that authentication information is not being used for customer name and address/email!  instead, authenticated customers still have to enter name and address

Brass Contributor

Yes, the authentication pass-through would be awesome! ALL of my customers are internal, so eliminating the need to type in Name and email address would be huge. Please and thank you. :)

Copper Contributor

When will Skype for Business be available for bookings, it is useless without it...

Copper Contributor

When will Skype for Business be available for bookings, it is useless without it...

 

 

Microsoft

@Bwest_Work  looks like this summer for meeting integration.

Brass Contributor

@Bwest_Work you have a couple of options while you wait for a summer roll-out of online meeting integration.

 

We have been using Bookings exclusively to schedule web conferences with clients and prospects. Initially, we created a static web page, pointing to it with instructions on how to join the web conference -- and we used a recurring Skype for Business meeting in order to not have to worry about updating the meeting information. That's one option. We include the link to the static web page both in the meeting confirmation and in the reminder email that goes out.

 

If you are concerned about meeting privacy, you can simply schedule a Microsoft Teams (or SFB) meeting concurrently with your Bookings calendar event, and pull the email address of the meeting attendee out of the Bookings calendar event. No shared meeting ID. We are just starting to do this now, and in private meetings include the URL to a static web page with instructions to watch for the meeting info in a separate calendar event coming from us, explaining that it is for data privacy.

 

It will be better to have this fully integrated with Teams, but we handle several meetings a week this way, and it allows the requester to pick a convenient time based on availability without having to go back and forth with email to lock it down. 

Steel Contributor

Still not seeing the authentication option here unfortunately.

Copper Contributor

In Microsoft Bookings is there a way to view all appointments by a customer? 

Copper Contributor

@Paul Cunningham Same here. I have waited for a feature like this one (internal "customers" only) since early 2018. So I have been very excited to hear it's coming! (as I barely realized it is now a thing, today)

 

We are planning to run a simple IT helpdesk booking system for our employees through this service. For instance, our employees will be able to book a PC Tune-Up, a Windows 10 build upgrade (1803, 1809, etc which is time consuming), etc through this. They pick a date and time and we show up, remotely. If it's an IT issue, they go through our ticket system as usual. 

 

By the way, if Microsoft decides to create a basic helpdesk ticketing system in Teams today, I will love them!!! Teams is definitely a way of life. A Dashboard. Bake everything useful in it and never look back. Sure there are tons of other solutions out there, free or paid. But if there is one thing I learned over the last 20 years, users have saturated in general. Keep it simple all in one spot and it's mission accomplished. The same users who think Outlook has been their "dashboard" and trunk for anything to store in there since 1999......................... Smiley LOL

Copper Contributor

@Gabo  Would you consider going beyond the existence of an O365 account - and allow to limit access to make bookings to an O365/Azure AD group?

Thanks!

Copper Contributor

Hi!

 

When will this be general available (E3, Europe, Sweden)?

 

BR // Tomas

Copper Contributor

It will also help if we can set timezone for each customer that is added. It will help staff members to be considerate of the appointment timezone when setting up appointments or bookings.

Copper Contributor

I need to search for an appointment in Bookings....is it possible? I don't see search functionality in Microsoft Bookings

Copper Contributor

@Gabo  I'm trying to figure out Set Service Availability option. Guess this is still not rolled out or am I doing something wrong?

Copper Contributor

I'm having an issue with emails being sent to customers, no longer have the ability to modify an appointment. They used to have the ability to cancel, reschedule, new booking from the email. Now they have a button that says " New Booking" and nothing to modify or cancel the appointment. Anyone else having this issue, or know https://www.nrmovers.ae/packers-and-movers-in-al-ain/ how to revert back to how we had it before

Copper Contributor

We are very happy about the recent upgrades, giving us more flexibility to allow parents at our school to book certain duties to help with our school's operations.  It would be great for us to be able to customize certain fields.  For example, we don't have "Staff" to choose from, but a sub-group of duties.  So being able to customize the "Select Staff" text to something else would mean we can use that function.  At the moment it would cause confusion so we don't.  The "Name" field, we would also like edit to read "student name".  Same for the "seller's" terms and condition reference.  It would be useful to be able to customize that, as we are a school, so not technically selling anything.

 

Also, we want to use the Office 365 login requirement, but currently if you click on the booking page link and aren't currently logged in on a browser, our users are receiving a "403 Forbidden access to page" message, instead of being taken to an office 365 sign-in page, or other holding page, that would allow them to proceed.    

Copper Contributor

Hi, For training purposes it would be great if i could create an IT training in Bookings. I am 1 trainer but I require multiple customers to book into 1 service. I would also need to limit to the number of customers that book in to the service. For example No greater 10 customers to attend a booking on MS TEAMS. Is there away to do this, or another office 365 product you recommend? 

Copper Contributor

Hi, @Gabriel Valdez Malpartida , i have enabled online payments in the admin centre but cannot see the online payments option in MS Bookings.  Is this option rolled out in the UK yet and if not is there a rough timeline as to when it will be available?

 

Many Thanks

Copper Contributor

@Gabo The feature "Require an Office365 account..." is a great improvement, however it would be great if you could also add access control via security groups. We are a school with 1000 students and we don't want to give parents the possibility to book consultation via their childrens Office365 accounts all year round. At the same time we want to give teachers a chance to place bookings in advance of the actual event. This could be easily accomplished, if we also had access control to the booking page via certain security groups (i.e. "all_teachers@..."). I guess this would be quite easy to implement and I'm sure this would be a great help for every school using Microsoft bookings. Thank you!

 

I just found q request in the Bookings UserVoice on that one, so please everybody vote for this!
https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings/suggestions/35859133-require-authenti...

Copper Contributor

HI @Gabo 

 

Is there any update in terms of the 

  • More control of your availability – Roll out to Targeted Release customers in March.

We need this feature to use Microsoft Bookings, without it, it is useless for our team. 

 

Thanks in advance

Jenn

Iron Contributor

Hi @Gabo ,

Could you please confirm if the Online meeting support feature is still on track for a 'Summer' release? This particular feature would upgrade Microsoft Bookings from an interesting alternative to booking meetings to a useful one within our organisation.

Also, I would like to call out a highly desirable UserVoice suggestion that exists. The suggestion is to 'Pre-populate user information on service request form' which would cut down the time users (especially when only allowing users within a particular domain) actually need to spend on populating a form.

Regards,

Bryce

Copper Contributor

Very nice functionality, would be even better with some kind of Event registration / Group booking like this:

https://outlook.uservoice.com/forums/314907-microsoft-bookings/suggestions/18810007-allow-group-serv...

 

Copper Contributor

Question about the new feature under Customization.  "Email confirmation customization"  Where is this setting found?  We would like to send a custom confirmation and ideally include a a webpage link to refer to our FAQ or a Form with more information depending on the reservation.

Copper Contributor

Question about the integrations:

  • When will online integrations be supported exactly?
  • Is there a specific date when MS Team will be integrated? This is really driving our need and hence we might need to select a Calendly+GoToMeeting combination instead.
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